‘The elderly can't get hospital beds or heating – but the council want to fine them for feeding pigeons'

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21-02-2025

'I could get fined £100 for this? Are you kidding me?' says 12-year-old Maisy, who's busy throwing Wotsits to the pigeons in Waltham Cross town centre. She scowls when I explain that Broxbourne Borough Council is considering introducing a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) making it an offence to feed the birds within central Cheshunt, Hoddesdon and here in Waltham Cross. 'It seems mean of the council. I'm happy. The pigeons are happy… That fat one over there is really happy because he keeps getting all the crisps, doesn't he?! He's my favourite.'
According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, a four-week consultation will be carried out, after which the order could come into force from April 1. A report prepared for councillors said: 'Pigeons are known to carry numerous diseases, including salmonella and E.coli. The droppings cause damage to buildings and street furniture and generally make a place look tired and worn.'
Are the locals in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, bothered by the birds? 'They're flying rats,' says Tracy, 60, on a cigarette break while cleaning one of the town's vape shops. She shudders as she describes 'people chucking food all over the ground outside of Greggs. The crusts from their sandwiches. It's partly because they're too lazy to use the bins. Then further down the street, outside the nail shop, people were throwing bags of raw rice! That's apparently incredibly bad for the birds because it can swell up inside them… I don't like them but that is cruelty.'
Tracy admits that when she was a child 'we'd go into London and pay a few pennies to feed the birds in Trafalgar Square – like in the song from Mary Poppins. But there wasn't such a problem then. Now we've got a problem here. It's at the point where they're all scuttling around your feet as you try to walk down the high street. They don't get out of your way. Then some kids will run at them and you'll get swarms of them flying into your face. Eugh. It's really unpleasant.'
She says the council has employed a hawk called Bella who comes with her handler on market days to scare the pigeons away. 'But they just retreat to the rooftops while she's here and come back down the minute she's gone. They're not stupid. It's like they're laughing at us!'
She points up at the more structural countermeasures taken against the pigeons. There's netting over many windows of the flats and shop store rooms from the second floor upward. Rows of spikes protrude from ledges, although the white splatter of pigeon droppings below many of those same ledges prove they're ineffective. I don't see as much pigeon poo here as I do in London. But it's mucky stuff. The uric acid it contains gives it a corrosive pH of 3.5-4. Combined with rainwater, it can accelerate the erosion of stone, concrete and brick. At the centre of Waltham Cross is one of the three surviving Eleanor Crosses – intricate stone monuments commissioned at the end of 13th century by a grieving Edward I in honour of his late wife Eleanor of Castile.
'I can't tell you how much money the council has spent having the pigeon s--- cleaned off of that,' sighs Tracy. Now the whole structure is boxed in by wire mesh. 'But it's more the health issue that bothers me.'
Although human disease caused by pigeons is very rare in the UK, a fungal infection called cryptococcus, linked to pigeon droppings, is believed to have been a contributing factor to two deaths at Glasgow's Queen Elizabeth Hospital in 2019. Breathing dust or water droplets containing contaminated bird droppings can lead to several diseases, including a flu-like illness called psittacosis. So the advice is always to wash your hands thoroughly after coming into contact with birds or surfaces they may have touched.
'Feeding pigeons is not a totally harmless activity,' says 26-year-old Seun Alaba, a policy adviser at the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra). 'But punishing the people who do it isn't going to work, is it? Pigeons will be pigeons and people will be people! Everyone is just trying to survive the best they can.' Alaba has lived in Waltham Cross since 2005. 'I used to work at the Jobcentre here and they covered it with that netting to deter the pigeons. That was awful – caused more of a hassle. The pigeons got trapped behind the netting and then you had to get people in to release them or they die a slow, painful death and rot there.'
Alaba gestures at the construction work that has ploughed up the previously pedestrian town centre to make way for a road. 'Ultimately that road is going to do more to deter the pigeons, because all the benches where people sat to feed them will be gone. But I don't see how cars will encourage more footfall for the shops. It's mad. The shops here are chains and charity shops.'
He mentions the building of a brand new, state-of-the art film studio up the road (Sunset Waltham Cross) 'and a hotel for all the A-list stars they hope will want to stay' as an explanation as to why the council are so keen to ban feeding pigeons. 'Maybe they're trying to clean the place up for that. But I have no idea how they're going to enforce it.'
When Havant Borough Council in Hampshire introduced the same policy in Waterlooville in 2018, it used 'pigeon patrols' to enforce the on-the-spot fines, which were then £80 but increased to £100. Only one person was fined in five years.
In the other affected towns of Cheshunt and Hoddesdon, I see zero evidence of a pigeon problem. There are only two of the birds (which mate for life) looking down from a building near the central fountain in Cheshunt, and I count about 15 in Hoddesdon. 'They do sometimes come inside the shopping centre and perch outside of Costa,' says Beryl, 89. 'But I leave them alone and they leave me alone.'
Up the road at The Star – a Wetherspoons pub converted from a 15th-century building – bar staff Lucy, 19, and Leanne, 39, tell me that 'the pigeons are not a problem here. We have to wipe up the tables in the pub garden so we'd know if there was a real issue!'
Lucy is angry that 'crime rates here are soaring. Antisocial behaviour is a huge issue. But instead of dealing with that the council want to fine a few kids and old people for feeding the birds? I think that's shocking. The elderly have lost so many resources. They can't get care, hospital beds, winter heating… A lot of them are lonely. If the birds offer a moment of companionship and joy, then they should be allowed to enjoy that in peace.'
Research in 2023 from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London found a 'direct link between seeing or hearing birds, and a positive mood.' Research from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and the Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf have shown that birdsong reduces anxiety and irrational thoughts. More specifically, in his 2016 memoir Fingers in the Sparkle Jar, TV wildlife presenter Chris Packham described how his engagement with wild birds saved him from suicide.
'There's no quick fix to this problem, is there?' says Alaba. 'I grew up in this town and it's not just old people. It's kids too. There is very little for them to do and I guess feeding the pigeons is fun and costs pennies.'
As I leave Waltham Cross I see pigeons squabbling over half a bagel that has been thrown from a flat above a cafe. At an outside table, Nick and Mark (both in their mid-forties) laugh as they watch the birds. They say that people often buy bird seed from a discount store opposite and throw it over the pedestrian area 'to annoy guys at the cafe'. But I cannot find bird seed in that store. What I do find is a six-year-old girl clutching a packet of Rich Tea biscuits, begging her mum to buy them. 'She just wants to feed the pigeons with them,' shrugs the girl's weary mum. 'One of them grabbed a Rich Tea out of her pocket a while back and she managed to catch it so now she wants to do it again.' This woman shows me a video of her daughter catching the pigeon. The child's face is glowing with delight. Then their smiles slip. 'But I can't afford the biscuits. And I can't afford the fines. So put them back!'
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